


Until Death Do Us Part

by peoriapeoria



Series: Seven Days [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: AU, Established Relationship, Family, Gen, Grieving, Super Soldier Serum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 08:33:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peoriapeoria/pseuds/peoriapeoria





	Until Death Do Us Part

Steve doesn't know where the past twenty years went. It seems like it should have been just a few years since they moved to Brooklyn. It's the twenty-first century and Steven Grant Rogers is closing on a century. He can't do this. He'd never expected to be a widower.

"Steve. We're going on a trip." Peggy had known. She'd taken them back to England. She'd known and now she was gone, and he couldn't do this. He turned as hands grasped his shoulders. The kids, the grandkids formed a phalanx around him. Guided him out of the churchyard, the older great-grandchildren herding their cousins behind them. The other mourners had drifted away some time ago. There were few contemporaries, naturally. Even the old friends that had been so much younger were winnowed by time, and both had too few hours remaining to stay by a grave.

He scooped up Michael as he bumped into his legs. He looked around his little troop. His children all looked like they should be his aunts and uncles, their spouses looking so much older. It was probably but a matter of time until the grandchildren started out-aging him. Steve Rogers hasn't aged since he grew a foot and gained more than a hundred pounds in minutes. Losing Peggy hurt worse.

He eats when they all arrive at the cottage. He remembers when he'd first seen it. "Cottage?" He had thought of something more modest, and perhaps thatched. The second floor was bigger than any apartment he'd had. He'd scooped up Peggy and carried her through the front door and through every other door, including the pantry's. They'd both been laughing by the end. Liza and later Kathleen clammer into his lap and he offers them forkfuls.

His children are all older than his parents ever reached; soon most of the grandchildren will be also. They don't all fit at the dining room table that had looked so huge all those years ago. The pre-nursery naptime line forms, people switch seats.

He looks down at the plate of dessert. Pudding, she'd have called it, for all that it was pie, cake, brownies and bars. He'd still been running into differences like that past Korea.

He'd been gone so much. He'd thought that would have changed when they moved thirty years ago; he'd been retired and the MBL had local cachet aplenty. Nixon shook Americans as repeated assassinations hadn't, and people needed to believe their country was better than paranoia and abrogations. He wondered what percentage of the kids that had seen his bond tour came.

There had also been conversations with senators and congressors, and later congressional hearings. For too many of them history was dry, while for him it was livid, blood-red. They thought him quaint for believing the right thing was aiding the weak when it held no short-term benefit, not just when they were pawns in a 'larger' game.

Valerie started singing. He didn't know how he could do this. He'd had Peggy backing him up for so long. He would have missed out on all of these wonderful people without her.


End file.
